Jeebus Cribbs. Let us break the 4th wall shall we? 

               I can write better than him. shit. I can't even go into detail much as I don't want him to find out. fuck it who cares? I do, a bit. I have this book in my hand. Well, it's not in my hand, it sits off to the side. It's small. It's not very good. It's 30 something pages and only half are writing and only half of that half is writing and even less is worth a shit. Actually none of it is good. It's shite. 

             But. It is in my hands. It's tangible. He did it. He fucking did it. He's self published several books. The illustrations are okay, because he hired them out, but his poetry is not good. It's less than "not good." But it is in my hands and mine is not in anyone's hands. It doesn't exist. Which is why I'm here. 

                See, he told me his secrets. He spilled. I can do this myself for pennies and he didn't even know I could do it or even better. Even if it's not good, I know it's better than that. I am sorry for feeling this way, but it is the way. He has me beat. Right up until these sweet words hit the hot press paper at the factory and you read them. The last sentence. If you read it, I've beaten him. It is not hard. As the great Bukowski had maintained all his life. "...I had to continue because they were so bad, not because I was so good. And I'm still not so good, but they're still very bad." I feel the same. 

            I have become conscious these past few years about my place in the world and what I'm here to do. I still don't yet fully know, if anything. But what I do is that I am an artist for better or worse. I cannot help it. I create. It began with music. I began as a drummer, and quickly learned the guitar because you cannot write much on the drums. You need a melodic instrument. The guitar lead to piano, the other highly melodic and chordal instrument. You can write melody easily on those two. Everything else is help. I'm writing lyrics and lines all day, every day. My life is a damn song. 

                  But throughout my life creativity has spurred and sputtered from other mediums. Film and video and the visual arts in that respect I find a creative outlet in. I can't paint or draw to save my life but I could put together a film if need be. It always came harder though. it's a lot of work. I never had the balls or energy or gumption and socializing it takes to create a really good short film. I've tried. I've also taken to blogging, (seriously in recent years), vlogging and audio logging my life in various forms. Mostly in the form of slightly comedic but sincere rhythmic writing. Someone more educated will be able to explain my style to you. Go ask. i don't know. 

           But sometimes my lyrics aren't quite suitable for music and my scripts are quite right for the moving picture and my blogs aren't really blogs but short stories or a bit more stylistic than a simple bitch-fest about my life and times. It deserves a different medium. Which may be this. It may also be my constant need for validation in this world. A stroking of the ego if you will as it were so it goes as the case may be. "Look! I've written a book!" Total narcissist. I am an artist after all. 

                 That being said, I've been told a few times I can write. Perhaps they're biased, or lying to me. The bar is so low these days. The fact that you've written more than 200 characters or eve words is considered a job well done today. What a sad world. So before I leave this life and times I might as well get another first over with. It is easy and if it's easy why can't we all do it? It's easier now, I should say. If it cost anything more than it did I'd probably tell myself it's not worth a shit and perhaps if you lived to a ripe middle-age with a mediocre job and a mediocre life, you'd get the few hundred bucks it took to collect a stack of unread books in a closet. But yet, now I have the luxury of only having a few books collect in the closet, instead of investing a stack. Isn't technology lovely?

            Back to Mr. Writer man. I met Mr. Writer man in a lovely little club in Maryland and he now has a few published works under his author sleeves and he had them all out of his suitcase and he dug my music and I was 2 PBR talls in and I had the liquid courage to pick his brain on his writings and books and how he got to do so. He handed me a pre-signed copy of his first book. Then we spoke for several minutes on how it was so easy. So very easy. Every step. I was already toying with the idea and several of them and even writing down these ideas and writing down the writing for these ideas and making sure these ideas were worth a damn and so forth. (a fancy author term, so forth) Even creating chapters and attempting to maintain continuity between them and merging and weaving and maintaining multiple story lines etc. This also includes abandoning and procrastinating these same stories and starting now unfinished or finished shorter writings. 

             So by picking the brain of someone who'd already done it so easily, I knew it was possible. Also, it wasn't very good. I was excited he had given me this book for free. but after returning, and reading it front to back in an hour in bed, it's actually quite horrible. But yet, charming and cute and very real. It feels good, to have a BOOK, with your name on it. 

               The tough part is, I wouldn't want my name on what he wrote. Which is probably why he handed it to me for free. 

        For the record, I would always and forever put my name at the end of anything I write and put out. But I am a hypocrite, because I enjoy having a pen name and I am still acquiring total comfort in bleeding on the page. The bleeding I'm natural at, the distribution and answering to, not so much.

                  Plus, I'm drunk.